


Through Another's Eyes

by Nativestar



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-07 23:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4282686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nativestar/pseuds/Nativestar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Knowing Tony Stark is a mixed blessing.</p>
<p>On the one hand, it’s nice to not be a beaten and bloody corpse.  On the other, he’s not sure he’d have given his permission to have his consciousness transferred into a host body had he been given the option.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Teaser

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: Let's say Matt's body gets critically wounded, and he has to be put into a medical coma to save his life. Let's also say that through some kind of handwaving, the technology exists (Stark tech? Banner's research? Asgardian medical tech?) to temporarily transfer consciousness into a different host body. And let's also say that there's vital information about a case or crime or something that only Matt knows. Foggy, Claire, and Karen decide to try this transfer process in the hopes that they can get this vital information, whatever it is. But now Matt has a different body (where did they find a body? I have no idea just shhh go with it) for a limited amount of time. What is this like? And how fucking weird would it be to (a) see and (b) not have any other skills or powers, and (c) stand over your own body and see what you look like and how beat up you look...

Consciousness returns to Matt slowly, like a tide coming in. He feels strangely disconnected from his body. It’s heavy and numb. There should be pain. He’s pretty sure he should be in pain but there’s none. He doesn’t know why there should be pain though. Did he do something?

He tries to pinpoint his last memory but it slips through the fingers of his mind like water. He remembers pizza at the office, with Foggy and Karen. He also knows that wasn’t his last memory, but what happened after remains stubbornly out of reach.

He can smell antiseptic and all those other medical smells that say _hospital_ and he can hear a monitor slowly following a heartbeat. But he can’t _hear_ anyone’s heartbeat. The sheets are scratchy but tolerable. He wonders if he’s been given drugs, if that’s why everything is muffled like he’s a thousand feet under water.

He hears voices. Tense, raised voices. A man and a woman, they’re arguing about... something. His hearing fades in and out and the voices are like a radio station he’s trying desperately to find.

“...had no right...”

“...wants to stop... as much...”

“How can this...Matt...not right.”

It’s him, Matt realises. They’re arguing over _him_. It shoots a jolt of fear through him. _Am I dying?_ _Did I do something?_ The voices fade away, but he doesn’t hear footsteps so he can’t tell if they’ve just stopped talking or if they’ve left. Whatever happened has affected his hearing and he really hopes it’s a side-effect of painkillers or something. He tries to open his eyes, if he’s lucky someone will be watching him and it’ll get their attention because he’s not sure if he can get his voice to work let alone be intelligible.

But his eyelids merely twitch and he cannot get them to open; they might as well be made of lead. He’s so very tired, he’s barely been awake five minutes and exhaustion is pulling him under. He feels like a pebble sinking to the bottom of an ocean as he slips back into unconsciousness.


	2. Chapter 1

The next time he wakes up, things have improved. His body is still heavy and sluggish, but he can move it. He can feel all of it although everything feels a bit off in a way that he can’t really put his finger on, he can’t describe it but he figures it’ll go away once he gets up and gets moving.

He opens his eyes and sees a plain white tiled ceiling.

It’s the world’s most boring ceiling that he should not be able to see. But he can. He can see it’s slightly off-white and the nine inch squares and the border that joins them and – he _should not be able to_.

His mind stalls and he closes his eyes again. _The hell?_ It’s been a long while since he hallucinated being able to see and he doesn’t remember the last time being so vivid and clear. And it was a hell of a lot more interesting than a _ceiling._

He cracks an eye open. Light floods in. He slams his eye shut. He can definitely _see._

Matt rolls over in one swift, if not smooth motion and opens both eyes. He wants to know where exactly he is and how they’ve managed to get twenty years old dead nerves to work again.

He’s definitely in a ward of some kind, but then he already knew that. And he’s alone, because the poor bastard in the bed next to him doesn’t really count considering he’s on what appears to be life support and just about every medical monitoring device known to man. The heartbeat monitor Matt heard earlier was the other guy although Matt himself appears to be monitored too, just on silent. He figures if anyone’s paying any attention the sudden lack of a heartbeat might get their attention and quickly removes the pads and finger clip as he swings his legs off the bed and promptly falls into a heap as they refuse to take his weight. Or do much of anything to be honest.

For one terrifying moment he fears he’s been paralysed before his rational mind kicks in and reminds him not only can he feel his legs but they are moving, just not very well and with little control.

The doors behind him open abruptly, bouncing back off the rubber stops that prevents them slamming into the wall.

“Mr Murdock?” A woman, a doctor if the lab coat is anything to go by, asks him cautiously, as if unsure of his name.

“Where am I?” Matt isn’t going to answer any questions until he knows if she’s friend or foe. She walks closer and squats down to his eye-level but keeps a safe distance. She’s petite and if Matt could get his legs under him then he could easily knock her over and make a run for the door.

“You’re safe. You’re in Avengers tower. My name is Doctor Maidstone, do you remember what happened?”

Matt shakes his head. Pizza with Foggy and Karen is still the last thing he remembers clearly.

“Okay,” She takes a breath and tucks a strand of hair that’s fallen down behind her ear. She has brown hair or at least Matt thinks it’s brown, identifying colours isn’t something he’s had to do for a while. “Okay, it’s not going to be a quick explanation so let’s get you off the floor and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“How about you start with how I can see again?”

She gives him a strange look and then turns away, gesturing to a nurse who comes over and between them and Matt’s legs which are slowly starting to co-operative with him again they get him sitting back on the bed.

Doctor Maidstone drags over a chair and sits. She stares at her hands for a moment and Matt wonders what could have happened that she needs to take the time to compose herself and gather her thoughts.

“There’s no easy way to explain but from what I know of you, you’ll appreciate it if I’m direct and honest with you. The Avengers found you in an abandoned warehouse. They were expecting to find an arms dealer but instead they got you. You were alone and badly injured.”

But Matt doesn’t feel badly injured. He knows he’s not quite right but he definitely knows injured and he is not that.

“Tony Stark brought you here for treatment. The man behind you, or rather the body I suppose, is you Mr. Murdock. Your consciousness is currently in a host body, a volunteer who was selected in part because his physical characteristics are similar.”

“The technology was developed using a combination of Asgardian technology and Stark resources.”

Matt’s first thought is that this is a prank, it’s a rotten prank and something that Stark would do. But then he looks down at his hands that aren’t his hands and everything that he thought was off about his body snaps into place and he really _looks_ at his hands. Of course they aren’t his own, he closes his eyes and runs his – their—hands over his face. The nose is longer, mouth wider, eyes closer. It’s all wrong. All of it.

He turns around. The battered body in the next bed looks familiar now that he knows what he’s looking at. He feels sick as he takes in the bandages, some spotted with blood. He slips off the bed and his legs hold him this time as he walks around his bed to stand next to... himself? There’s so much equipment, IVs, monitors and bandages. It _can’t_ be him, beneath it all. Can it?

Doctor Maidstone carries on her explanation behind him but he only half pays attention.

“I’m afraid you have extensive injuries, it took our medical team hours to stabilise you and in order to do that they had to put you in a medically induced coma. At the moment you’re stable, but you’re not out of the woods yet.”

Matt closes his eyes and reaches out a hand, brushing it over the face. Gently, over closed eyes and soft eyelashes, sweeping down the nose, feeling the way the lips settle around the breathing tube. It’s so surreal. He can’t feel any of it himself but it is undeniably his own face.

“Why have you done this to me?”

“The man who did this to you, he’s planning something. We don’t know what or where or when but we know it’s not good and a lot of people could get hurt. We think you might be able to help us, maybe he said something or you noticed something.”

Pizza. With Foggy and Karen. It’s all his mind supplies him with. He’s not even sure how long ago that was.

“I can’t remember anything.”

“It might come back. The transfer was rough; it’ll take time for things to settle, for you to adjust.”

He nods even though he’s not sure it’s possible to adjust to something like this. He wonders if he can’t remember anything whether they’ll just put him back into his broken body. Then he realises, _he_ might not know what he was doing in an abandoned warehouse but someone else might.

“Have you got my phone, I need to make a phone call.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm looking for a beta reader for future chapters for typos, grammar and glaring plot holes. If anyone is interested let me know! I'm hoping to keep to a regular posting schedule of once or twice a week.


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